ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2011) — "Nearly all active people suffer ankle sprains at some point in their lives, and a new University of Georgia study suggests that the different ways people move their hip and knee joints may influence the risk of re-injury."
Ankle sprains due tend to be acute and may be unavoidable as when someone rolls up on you such as a lineman in football, but this article presents the idea that some ankle sprains can be caused by the way you moved, and can be treated through rehabilitation.
As we will find out when we become ATC's, ankle sprains are the number one injury in sports and we will see them the most. What this article points out is that some people can recover completely while some just have recurring ankle sprains no matter how much rehab they do. "One theory for explaining those divergent paths is that a person comes up with good strategies to move, land, balance and not get re-injured,"
The did an examination of 88 participants jumped on a platform and recorded it. The groups where split up into healthy ankles, people who had sprained ankles but where fine now and did not experience any pain, and the third group where people who had chronic ankle sprains. What was noticed was that the first two groups jumped and landed on the board and they had good mechanics. The third group would jump and had akward landings because they were not encorporating their hips and knees like the first two groups.
One thing that has been beat into us as athletic training grad students here at Bridgewater, is to not treat the injury but treat the cause. It seems even as evident as in something as an ankle sprain in which we thought "an acute injury, will strengthen them and get them to 100% and they are all set." It may not be as easy that and this is something I will definately look at next time I am doing an ankle rehab.
This is a very informative article. We have also been taught to look above and below the injury but I wouldn't have thought to look into the hips. It'll be interesting to see if a study or experiment is done to see how well people with chronic ankle injuries heal and if they get injuries as often. I think it would be a good thing to look into as athletic trainers when an athlete comes in with chronic ankle sprains.
ReplyDeleteGood article to get you thinking outside the box when treating and rehabilitating not only ankle injuries but any type of injury to the body. Each person should be treated individually and attention should be paid to the whole segment chain that is attached to the injury. It is important as health professionals to look at the whole body and not just the area where it hurts to find the cause of the problem.
ReplyDeleteThis article was very informative. I do agree with Jocelyn in that we are taught to look above and below an injury but I can see how the hips can play a role in an ankle injury. About a month ago I observed my ACI do an ankle evaluation on a swimmer. In his evaluation he was able to discover abnormalities in the knee as well as problems at the hips, lower back and shoulders. Treating just the ankle of this swimmer would have her back in the training room the very next day but properly rehabing each segment and correcting all deficiencies of the swimmer, she was able to perform effectively with no more ankle problems.
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